World and All
by Persephone Kore
Summary: Set in Alicia's Shadowlands AU. When all the realities are collapsing into each other, Franklin Richards has the power to make the world seem right again but is it real or illusion, and what happens when the one he's been missing distracts him?


_Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction based on properties of Marvel Entertainment Group. It also falls (with permission) in Alicia's Shadowlands universe, but nowhere in the vicinity of the Oasis stories. The song is "One Boy, One Girl" by Collin Raye._

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World and All  
by Persephone  


_//He finally gave in to his friend's girlfriend  
When she said, "There's someone you should meet";  
At a crowded restaurant way cross town  
He waited impatiently.  
When she walked in, their eyes met  
and they both stared  
And right there and then everyone else disappeared....//_

He had just about everyone now. 

In the middle of the shifts where realities slide past each other in a deadly razor dance, there was New York.

Not a place where New York used to be. It might very well have been; there were thousands of New Yorks, several in the same place as each other in layers, some that had wandered away. That wasn't important. This was no shift-shattered remnant; this was the city itself, as it had been, as it should be.

Surely the boy who had once made a universe in a toy could craft his sane home again out of madness. 

Painstakingly, he had built it out of memory. It wasn't as complete as that other universe, no. But it held together as other worlds tried to shear it from forty directions in seven dimensions at once, and it held everyone Franklin Richards remembered caring for, save one. They came, or he brought them. He'd almost had her several times, but never quite right; he'd never been satisfied....

"She's coming." 

Franklin looked up and gave Alison a friendly smile. Now, was her name still McCourt, or was it Powers? Or was she still with Alex? 

Of course she was. He'd made sure. They hadn't been together for a while, but they were now. He fixed that firmly in his head, then shook it gently. "It doesn't matter."

"She is. And I think she's the right one." She hesitated. "Well, I can't be *sure*, of course. But she might be. She could be...."

"It's all right." He frowns a little, his train of thought slipping. "It's almost done...."

"Except for her." She lays a hand on his shoulder, leaning in earnestly. "She's _real_. And she's close by. Go watch for her!" 

That was true, she was the one missing. And the real one -- she might be the real one. The right one.

He could make her be the right one, couldn't he? If he said she was, she would be. He _missed_ her. They'd had their child -- hadn't they? Even if he'd gone mad.... 

Franklin wavered again, and his vision of the walls and ground and Alison wavered too. Who had really gone mad? And was he thinking of the right world, the right life? 

"Well... maybe I will."

He waited at a restaurant that didn't have a name, because he couldn't remember it. It was always very busy, though. He remembered being here with his parents when he was five, and they had had to wait what seemed like forever. 

It seemed to take forever now too.... 

At last he glimpsed a crash of red; she'd come in out of the chaos and was looking around, bewildered and lost but still lighting up the room. He smiled. His Ray, his warmth.... 

He sounded awfully mushy, didn't he?

He still couldn't quite see her properly; everything seemed to be going a little hazy. His eyes itched with trying to see her when she was still out in the madness, and with looking through the wall.

Then she stepped through the door and caught sight of _him_, and he could see her. Franklin stopped fidgeting and bounced to his feet as their eyes met; he drank in the sight of her, and her eyes widened. They darted aside for a second, a strange sort of subtle, incomprehensible horror growing as she looked around, and then her gaze was drawn back to his. 

She stared. He stared back, heart soaring, and stepped forward to take her hand, forgetting all the rest. 

New York and the restaurant and the crowd vanished, and they two were all at once alone.


End file.
